Sergio Perez was one of the star performers at last Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix, storming to finish in third place after seeing off the challenges of teammate Nico Hulkenberg, Felipe Massa, Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo. The result marked just the second ever podium finish in Force India’s history, with the first coming almost five years ago.

However, it wouldn’t have happened had he quit Formula 1 at the end of 2013 after being sacked by McLaren.

The Mexican driver rose to fame in the sport back in 2012 after claiming three podium finishes with Sauber, and coming close to winning the Malaysian Grand Prix behind Fernando Alonso. After Lewis Hamilton confirmed that he would be leaving McLaren in favor of a switch to Mercedes, the British team quickly snapped Perez up as his replacement.

But 2013 was a year from hell for McLaren. The MP4-28 car was well off the pace, meaning that both Perez and teammate Jenson Button could not reach the podium across the entire season. The Mexican was still ousted in favor of Danish youngster Kevin Magnussen. Before finding refuge at Force India for 2014, Perez nearly quit the sport altogether.

“When the McLaren decision came I was really frustrated with how things went,” Perez explained to Autosport. “I said to myself it isn’t for me. I was not willing to just go to anything.

“I really wanted to find the thing that motivated me to stay in F1 because otherwise I was willing to look for other options.

“But when the Force India came it was a straight forward decision, and we managed to do a deal.”

Perez’s career did appear to be in the lurch after being dropped by McLaren. Despite finding the seat at Force India, there were still a few question marks about his future. Is he the same driver that was at Sauber in 2012, dragging the C31 to three podiums? Or is this still the tame racer that we saw in 2013?

After two luckless races in Australia and Malaysia (the latter he failed to even start), Perez proved last Sunday that he still has the fire to fight at the very front. Moving up to the big time with McLaren so quickly appeared to go to his head a little bit, but with Force India, he finally appears to have found a more comfortable grounding in the sport.

IMO Perez is capable but he has to control his driving aggression and know when and where to pass. Unfortunately McLaren was hurting the past couple years with a duff car. Whitmarsh isn’t getting any credit from the media for the much improved ’14 car that he orchestrated. It’s the SOS, DD in F1 racing. One day you’re a hero and the next a zero.